


No Child of Mine

by ninhursag



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst and Humor, Drug Addiction, Dysfunctional Family, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Prostitution, Rape Recovery, rape revenge, woobie boy being toppy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-27
Updated: 2011-02-27
Packaged: 2017-10-15 23:54:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/166202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninhursag/pseuds/ninhursag
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The ridiculously angsty hookerfic of doom. From the kinkmeme prompt <i>So, Eduardo's father always figured his son was useless. But he is nice to look at and there's some good in that. Cue the idea that he can use Eduardo as a 'sweetener' to close some tricky business deals. He's been doing just this for years when it comes time to close a particularly tricky deal...</i></p><p>Forced prostitution, revenge, drama, chases/stalking across Europe and Asia, inappropriate humor, lots of angst, socially maladaptive behavior, and eventually, a happy ending.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Child of Mine

**Author's Note:**

> If you found this story by googling your name, turn back now, for god's sake. It has nothing to do with you and everything to do with my demented imagination and thinking that AG is pretty when sad. Sorry, really.
> 
> Oh, and a thanks to azepherin, for humoring my off the wall ravings re:this story. You are a good, kind woman, bb.

**Prologue**

The boy's never been good for much. A child with no instincts and soft, dark cringing eyes. It wouldn't matter if he were a girl, that would be acceptable in a girl, but this... this is to be his heir, this thing that flinches from words before they even turn into slaps, that crawls into his mother's lap when it's clear she has no time for him.

It changes when he gets older. Oh, the boy is still a useless, flailing disaster, he doesn't ever grow into strength. He grows into something else, one school vacation, home from Miami and wandering the house, still in his uniform blazer. Out from underfoot at least, until dinnertime. There's a colleague, a man who can bring in a contract that will earn millions, if he can just be sold correctly.

There's always a way to sell correctly, assuming it is worth the cost. The man's eyes settle just a little too long on that boy, that useless mess of a child that is no longer quite a child but remains useless. Suddenly, the world opens up with possibilities. After all, there has been a great deal of money sunk into that boy over the years and there's not much hope he'll earn it back, is there?

So, he whispers to his colleague, subtle, insinuating, never quite saying what's on offer. But his colleague's eyes light up in sudden understanding and he nods and licks his lips. They shake hands. After dinner, he tells the staff not to interfere if there are any disturbances in the night, tells his wife she looks tired, a sleeping pill would be best. He sleeps with earplugs in.

They sign a contract the next morning, over breakfast. The boy doesn't come down, probably sulking. No one sees much of him until it's time to ship him back to school, just an impression of bruised eyes and swollen wrists. They all hear him-- he hides in the bathroom, running the hot water for hours as though it costs nothing. But that is no matter, he's earned his keep for once.

He doesn't need the boy for these tasks often at first-- most men prefer a woman, and these can be procured easily and cheaply enough. But there are times enough and then the boy develops a certain reputation, such that those so minded know to ask. At the same time the boy becomes more expensive to keep. It seems all the money spent on schooling may as well have been tossed into the trash and lit-- there are whispers of drugs, drinking, and repulsive behavior in clubs with both men and women, as if these things can be countenanced or will ever bring anything but shame on the one who indulges in them.

Such things can be ignored for a time, however, and are for some years, but not when they come with the finality of an expulsion notice from that useless school, the one that clearly taught him nothing. The boy is seventeen, nearly grown, and more of a waste than ever. He lingers at home in his old bedroom dressed in clothing worth more than he is, hung over when he isn't drunk and stinking of liquor. Worse than liquor, there's no question what the random nose bleeds and endless jitters mean. He is an addict, disgusting.

The breaking point is when the boy tries to bring his filth into the house with him-- a dark skinned, laughing man who speaks Portuguese with a heavy accent. That one is thrown out. The boy doesn't protest, just watches like he's a spectator and it has nothing to do with him, fever bright drugged eyes taking in everything.

“If you're going to whore for drugs, do it on your own time,” he tells the boy.

That makes the boy laugh-- strange he can't remember hearing him laugh, not for a long time. There's a hoarseness in it that speaks of not enough sleep and worse things. “No, Pai. I promise, in this house I'll only whore for you.”

He stops laughing when he's punched in the useless face. At least he doesn't flinch anymore like he did when he was a child, just picks himself up, shrugs his shoulders and walks upstairs.

That is all there is worth speaking of, until there is the American, the one who is a little more than a boy himself.

**São Paulo**

Mark is bored. His computer's off and he's on the wrong side of sober, so that's not unusual. It's just he never expected that plotting world-wide domination in exotic locations-- for his company-- was going to be dull.

Letty, the babysitter cum local guide cum PR flak that Chris had hired for him seems to pick up on how absolutely uninteresting the flannel suit set of São Paulo actually are to him, so that's something. She sighs, like he's the one boring her, or just being a particularly troublesome breed of overgrown child, which is annoying, but she says, “Let's go see something different, maybe you'll like it better.” She picks the place.

She's objectively hot with gray-blue eyes and a sort of angularity relieved by just the right proportion of curves, like something's mathematically correct about her. She also walks around in very high heeled, impractically clicky looking shoes that would probably hurt like hell if she got you in the instep with them, so Mark's less irritated than he should be when something different turns out to be a trendy dance club that's more Sean's or really anyone's scene then his. They hadn't even wanted to let him through the doors until Letty talked to them, probably dropping his name and net-worth in the right ears.

It's the kind of place he imagined himself in when he was rich and famous, but it was another one of those things that was a lot more boring in real life than it looked. Mostly drunk people dressed in tight clothing groping under strobe lighting with inexplicable pop music grinding out of the speakers. Mark spends a few minutes not dancing before making a beeline for the bar. He doesn't speak more than three words of Portuguese and Letty seems to have vanished in the crush, but the bartender gets it when he mimes pulling a beer, so there's that.

He pulls up a barstool that's unoccupied and looks around. The place remains full of sweaty, attractive people groping each other. He's fairly sure he's already seen and jerked off to the porno version of this scene and it was better then. He is mildly intrigued by a very tall, long legged black girl with a mass of intricate braids, but she seems very involved with the act of pressing her ass against her equally tall dark-eyed dance partner, a guy with very regular features who makes the whole dancing thing look improbably simple. Mark watches them for a while, chin on his elbow, and decides they both get eights, maybe even nines. The guy's a little too skinny and the girl could probably beat the shit out of Mark if she were in a bad mood if her arm muscles are anything to go by, but he's had worse in terms of eye candy.

After a few minutes, they disappear into the crowd, possibly to grope more in private and Mark reaches into his messenger bag to pull out his laptop and start reviewing the user projections that marketing had emailed him on the flight over. He figures Letty will appear to take him back to the hotel and a reliable internet connection before too long and then he can get some real work done.

Letty doesn't appear, but the figures are absorbing enough that he finishes one beer and starts on a second without noticing. He makes a few comments on the spreadsheet and hums to himself under his breath. When someone comes up behind him and puts a warm, careful hand on his shoulder it takes him a second to notice it's too broad to be Letty's. The voice in his ear, low and amused sounding, is definitely male and not Letty's either.

“Man, I've been watching you, and I wanted to ask--” and here Mark expects some lame gag about people who bring laptops into dance clubs, is all braced for it, but what the guys says is, “Do you know the math in your projections is complete shit?”

“Excuse me?” Mark blinks and turns around, finding himself face to face with the dark eyed guy he'd seen dancing earlier. Up close his features are still ridiculous regular and symmetrical and he's grinning. His breath smells like beer, but Mark really likes beer, so that's no problem.

“I said,” the guy says. “That the numbers you have there are garbage. I hope it's not for anything important.” While Mark is thinking up a response, the guy settles on the stool next to him and without asking, helps himself to a pen from Mark's messenger bag and a cocktail napkin from the bar. His handwriting is fluid and precise and he lays out the problems with the formula that marketing had been using in a short string of equations, the letters and numbers coming out as smooth as code on a good day.

Mark frowns, staring down at the cocktail napkin. “Huh,” he says. “Well, I guess I know now. Thank you, uh--”

The guy smiles again. It's a very wide smile, no less symmetrical than the rest of him. “Eduardo,” he says. Mark takes a moment to notice that his English is barely accented, even better than Letty's, wherever she went to, but decides he isn't interested enough in that facet to pursue it right now.

“'Wardo,” he says, agreeably, even hearing himself mangle the name. “I'm Mark.”

Eduardo's smile doesn't fade from blinding, not even a degree. “Good enough,” he says and claps Mark on the shoulder. “Now, put away your garbage numbers and come and dance.”

“I don't dance,” Mark says, by which he thinks is implicit that he can't. Eduardo raises an eyebrow.

“Seriously,” he says, “Put the laptop away and come with me.” There's something peculiarly deep about his eyes and for some reason, Mark wants to say yes very much. This is not the sort of thing that happens to him. Sean Parker maybe, but not usually him. And why the fuck shouldn't it?

He shuts his laptop down and puts it away, sliding the cocktail napkin full of Eduardo's handwriting in with it because someone may be losing their jobs over those shitty figures. Not right now, though. Eduardo doesn't actually seem interested in dancing, but he does let Mark spend a few minutes stepping on his feet before he laughs-- delighted, head thrown back and long neck in sharp relief under the strobe lights-- and grabs Mark by the hand. “Let me show you something,” he shouts over the music.

In the back of his head, Mark has a vague idea that it's probably not safe to follow strange guys, however attractive, in strange cities, where one does not even know the language and is also uncertain of the destination. This time turns out to be okay, though, because the place Eduardo seems to want to go is the men's room down the hall and what he wants to do there is to push Mark into one of the stalls, get down on his knees and suck his dick. This is a very hard plan to object to.

Mark can count the blow jobs he's received on one hand with fingers to spare, which is little sad, he supposes, but he's been busy. As for blow jobs from guys, this makes number one, but even if it hadn't been the first one it would still be... yeah... because it's like this--

He's got his shoulder blades pressed almost flat against the rickety wood of the stall behind him and his legs spread and there's Eduardo between them, and fuck, he's tall. Tall and lanky with these bright, bright hectic eyes, like he's high, which he could very well be. And his breath smells so good, close to Mark's mouth, but not touching, he never even angles for a kiss. They just hover like that for a moment, like someone's waiting for permission and Mark's the one that gives it with a nod like a puppet with strings cut.

Then Eduardo just sinks down. He's wearing these silky, expensive looking pants and the floor doesn't exactly look clean, but that doesn't phase him, because he's on his knees, looking up from under thick, dark eyelashes and smirking like a cat with the cream while he unzips Mark's jeans. His mouth is stupidly warm when it's pressed up against the cotton of Mark's boxers and there's an embarrassing moaning noise Mark's pretty sure is coming directly from him.

He loses track of embarrassment somewhere along the way, which is a damned good thing because he's making ridiculous noises even before Eduardo slides his boxers down and just goes for his goddamned cock like he's been doing it for years and sucks him almost to the balls. And oh, fuck, if _this_ is what deepthroating feels like, no wonder the guys in porn are all for it. Mark forgets where to put his hands and finds them braced on Eduardo's skinny shoulders, digging into muscle and bone and trying not to thrust because that would mean it would be all over.

It's all over soon anyway, and fuck if Eduardo doesn't swallow. Mark stares at him while he does, feeling blown-out, literally, but not too much so to miss the motion in Eduardo's throat. That's going straight into his mental harddrive, to be filed under spank bank, password protected.

“Jesus fucking christ,” he manages afterward, while Eduardo is zipping him back up.

That makes Eduardo smile at him, even as he clambers up to his feet. “He and I are both Jewish, so that works,” he says.

“No, really. You should take up blow jobs professionally. I'd pay for that,” Mark says and is too blown to notice the color Eduardo turns-- a dull red-- right away. What he doesn't miss is the equally fast pullback, when a second before Eduardo was warm and close, almost climbing on top of him.

“Yeah, well consider this a freebie,” Eduardo mutters, and then under his breath, something in Portuguese, which Mark strongly suspects might translate into _you asshole_ , because that's the usual line. “See you around. Maybe,” Eduardo adds.

Mark takes that as a cue to give him his email address, which Eduardo excepts with a raised eyebrow and tucks into his pocket. The knees on his pants are a little damp, Mark notices and that... okay, that's also hot for some reason. Before he has a chance to mention this hotness and how he might like to do some more touching, Eduardo lets himself out of the stall and goes... somewhere. Wherever he came from presumably.

Mark sighs and wanders back out into the club, running headlong into a slightly freaked looking Letty. “Tell me that of all the hundreds of people in this club, you didn't just have sex in a bathroom stall with Eduardo Saverin,” she says, in the tone of someone asking a pointlessly rhetorical question.

“He never said his last name,” Mark says and shrugs. “So, I can't be sure of that, no. Why?”

She taps her clicky heels against the sticky floor like the weapon of evil they probably are. “Stay away from him. There's trouble that's fun and then there's trouble you don't need-- he's the second kind. Also...” she sighs.

“Also?” he prompts.

“His father is the investor you're having dinner with tomorrow.”

Oh. Great.

***

Mark has never been accused of being savvy to social nuance, so maybe it's Letty's hissed out warning about trouble that has his mental alarms ringing even as they settle into dinner at the house-- no, mansion really, complete with staff in uniform.

But then, maybe not, Saverin senior just feels oily to talk to, like he's all thin surface. His wife acts like Mark's parents' old neighbor, the one who was addicted to Ativan. And then there's Eduardo, who definitely looks like last night's Eduardo-- if he had been secretly replaced with a hungover zombie pod person, who didn't smile or laugh or act like he'd ever seen Mark before in his life. Mark lets him take the lead-- who is he to object to a completely valid avoidance technique? He probably needs it in this house.

It's not easy, though, not at this proximity, not when there'd been even less distance last night and Eduardo makes a surprisingly attractive hungover zombie pod-person. He's pretty sure everyone can tell where his eyes want to stick no matter what else he's trying to look at.

“I wish my own son had the kind of fortitude and talent to be a success like you at such a young age,” Saverin says, like his own son isn't right there, pretending he's not hearing every word. Mark tries to imagine his dad saying anything close to that, in or out of his earshot and just... comprehension fails.

“There's only one of me,” he says, because at least he knows that's true. And also Eduardo's mouth twitches into an almost smile visible from across the table, so that's a win.

It doesn't get really weird until he and senior were in the library, surrounded by a bunch of books that might possibly have been bought to match the wallpaper and talking 'business'. Then the guy smiles this hard-edged little smile and says, “Eduardo's not terribly intelligent or talented, but he is obedient when properly motivated. I saw you watching him and I thought you might wish to know that an arrangement can be made.”

It take a little bit more of this and some thoughts about last night and what Eduardo had said to coalesce with all of Letty's vague warnings into the understanding that yes... this asshole is trying to pimp his kid. To him. And he comes that close to telling the dirty old perv that he's a dirty old perv and walking the hell out, except it occurs to him that there _is_ something he wants here and he might not have to walk out empty handed. Metaphorically.

It's an impulse move, Mark might never have made it if he'd thought too hard about possible PR ramifications of this going wrong in any way, but he trusts his instincts this far, at least. He still doesn't look senior in the eye, just past him. “Sure,” he sees, like he doesn't actually care either way. “I wouldn't mind seeing him in my hotel room.”

So, he's not even a little surprised when a few hours later, there's a knock at his hotel door and there Eduardo is. He looks tired, red rimmed around the eyes and if he's not hungover its probably because of hair of the dog, but he's not half as stiff as he was back at the house.

He's wearing a suit of all ridiculous things, a real one, not the sport coat thing that Mark's lawyers and PR people make him wear sometimes. It looks good on him, but he's not smiling, which is less good. “You asked for me,” he says, and Mark doesn't answer, because some things are too obvious for words.

Some things, not so much.

So, first fact: Eduardo, no matter what his idiot father thought, was clearly damned far from dumb; Also--

Last night at the club was a hell of a coincidence. Eduardo hadn't just been at the right club, he'd fucking clocked Mark and latched right on.

And now: this. Eduardo sitting on his hotel bed, taking off expensive looking leather shoes to reveal what are probably silk socks. His feet look long and weirdly vulnerable unshod.

“Did you know who I was? In the club?” Mark has to ask. “And give me some credit here. Don't lie.”

Eduardo shrugs, like it doesn't matter. “I had an idea. I wanted to see what you were like before you had any preconceived notions about what was happening here.”

“And what is happening here?” Mark presses his palm to his chin like he's really not sure.

Eduardo's short laugh is brutal sounding. “You asked me to give you some credit. What do you think?”

It sounds like an invitation to be honest, and Mark can do that much so he goes with it. “I think your father's a douchebag who's trying to whore you out to close business deals. I'm sure this isn't the first time, you all know the game too well. But you're still in his house and you're over eighteen now, so I think he has something on you that's keeping you here.”

Eduardo gives another small laugh. “Depends what you mean by has something, it's complicated, but yes, pretty much that.”

Mark nods. “So, I know where I fit into his plans. Now tell me where I fit into yours.”

Eduardo sighs and tugs his knees up on the bed, pressing his chin against them. He looks young like that, like a lost little boy with big eyes in his dad's suit. It makes Mark feel tired even as he recognizes that, yeah, he's being manipulated here. Anyway, he's listening. “Okay,” Eduardo says softly. “I need my passport, which he's got, and enough cash for a plane ticket. I can figure out the second one, so never mind that, but the first one's a problem.”

Lead with the obvious. “So, if money's no issue, why can't you get it reissued? Or, I don't know, get a fake?”

“I've tried. It's not just the piece of paper. It's actually surprisingly easy to get someone flagged at immigration if you have influence, did you know that?” He lets out a long breath, and lets his chin collapse back down between his knees, burying his face for a moment. “I told you it was complicated. I want to get out of this country and somewhere he doesn't have influence.”

“And if I help you, I get...”

Eduardo snorts a laugh without raising his head. It comes out muffled. “The obvious? What you see is pretty much what I've got to bargain with.”

A part of Mark wonders why he even cares. Yeah, it's sordid and creepy and Eduardo doesn't seem to deserve to be involved in it, and he'd probably throw some money at it if it were a charitable cause. Well, except, right now, it's not an it. It's a guy, a surprisingly interesting one, offering to make himself... available. Which is not, in itself, an uninteresting proposition.

However. Mark might not be the world's best or most astute person, but he did have parents who tried to raise him right. He shakes his head. “Excuse me if I don't want my first time having full on sex with a guy to be with someone who's only doing it because his asshole father has his passport hostage. That's bullshit, Eduardo.”

That makes Eduardo raise his head an look at him. There's a little wrinkle between his eyebrows, like he's thinking, like he maybe hadn't expected some part of that. “Ethics and morals, I'm intrigued. I like it. But, seriously? First time, you? Aren't you the world's youngest wunderkind or something? I'd think you'd be fighting them off.”

“Whatever,” Mark says, and never mind the vague feeling of heat on his cheeks, like he might be blushing. “It hasn't been a priority. And is also not the point. The point is, I'm going to help you because I'm going to help you. You don't need to do this whole Mata Hari bullshit thing you're trying to do.”

Eduardo frowns, the line between his brows deepening. “Okay, but... what do you want me to do?”

Mark shrugs, trying to think the issue through himself. “Whatever you want? Go home and let me decide if the best way to do this is hack into the government databases and see how to unblacklist you.”

Eduardo blinks. Mark can almost see the gears spinning in his head-- they seem to move faster than most of the idiots Mark has to deal with. “You can do that? No, wait, don't do that. I'd really rather not watch you get arrested by the CIA. I've read my Chomsky and they torture people, you know.”

“They'd have to catch me first.” Not that he's definitely doing that. It just seems like it might be the most straightforward, least people intensive plan available.

“No way. You're going to disappear into some black op site and they're going to use me as the patsy to explain what happened.” Mark tries to formulate a response to this, but then he takes a really long look at Eduardo and realizes that his mouth is twitching and the little asshole is trying not to laugh.

He makes a face and then Eduardo does actually laugh, like he knows he's caught. He looks happy, for real, not the fake bitter laughing like when he was talking about his father. It's... really attractive, actually, seeing him happy. Knowing that Mark made him happy, even for a moment. It makes Mark wonder what it would be like to touch his cheek and feel his skin vibrate with the sound. Mark can't help smiling back at him. “Hey, you know, the least you can do is not make fun of me when I'm trying to save your ass here.”

“I know, but, you looked so serious, man,” Eduardo says, trying to suppress snickers with an obvious effort. “You should see yourself.”

“I mean it, though. You can go home if you want.” It's meant to be a nice thing to say but it goes down like a lead balloon. The laughter dies in Eduardo's dark eyes and he looks away, down at the floor and it's a sudden reminder that no, nothing is actually okay here.

“Yeah, if it's not too much trouble, I'd rather stay here. It's a suite, I'll sleep on the couch.”

Mark shrugs. “Sure, if it helps.” And he wants to say, hey, take the bed, we can share, but then it's the ethics thing again. What he needs to do is log back onto his website and deal with something less confusing for a while.

Eduardo watches him boot up his laptop with more attention than it probably warranted. “Hey, you're not actually going to hack any government websites right now, are you?”

“No,” Mark says, sparing him a glance. “Not right now.”

“Good. I'm going to sleep. Wake me up if you do.” With that Eduardo gets on his feet and pads off to the bathroom, shoes discarded behind him. Mark vaguely wonders if he's going to sleep in his suit, but he takes so long in there Mark gets distracted and into the place in his head where there's nothing but code, beautiful and infinite.

Eduardo must have come out of the bathroom eventually, because the next time Mark looks up, he's curled on the couch, blanket pulled up to his chin and breathing evenly. His suit is neatly folded on a nearby chair. Mark nods to himself and takes a second to look up Eduardo. He doesn't have a facebook page, but some time with google reveals that he was a student at a Miami prep school a few years back-- reporter on the student paper, covering the investment beat, go figure. He could... can, presumably, write. Nothing about him graduating though, which is weird. Then a few pages in Portuguese that translation software reveals to be society or entertainment pages. Most of them have to do with drug busts or something like that, but even those are a few years old. Nothing since, not even message board postings. Literally, like he's dropped off the face of the Internet. More weird. Mark yawns and goes back to coding.

He doesn't remember falling asleep, but he must do it, because he wakes up with a nasty crick in his neck and the indentation of a laptop keyboard on his check. Not unusual. What is new is the warm hand on his shoulder, accompanied by a weirdly familiar scent.

“Come to bed,” a low, faintly amused voice tells him. “Your joints will thank you in the morning.”

“What are you, my mom?” Mark mumbles and gets a laugh in response. He goes where urged though and Eduardo more or less walks him to bed, step by step. He yawns heavily and tries to move his neck into a comfortable position, but it aches.

Eduardo seems to sense this, because then there are strong fingers settling into his shoulders, rubbing gently. “Hey, lie down,” Eduardo murmurs and settles in closer. He's warm and feels good and he's doing something magical with his fingers that makes Mark's overwhelmed neck muscles relax after a few minutes. Then he remembers he's sleepy again and closes his eyes to keep out the gray beginnings of morning trying to seep in through the heavy curtains.

He almost doesn't hear Eduardo behind, whispering in his ear. “Are you really going to help me?”

“Sure,” he says after a heavy yawn. He sighs and snuggles down into the bed. It's soft but not too soft, expensive, high thread count sheets and firm mattress. Scent of expensive cologne lingering on the warm body so close to his.

There's a pause, like Eduardo's breath is hitching. Mark finds himself tugged back to awareness, listening to it, but it's hard to concentrate. Tired. “Why?” Eduardo whispers.

Mark blinks. Yawns. Sleep is calling. “'Cause. You're nice. Gave me an orgasm, which was nice. Your dad's a douche.”

“Ah,” he hears. “I thought so.” For some reason there's a twist in his stomach, like he maybe said something wrong. Which is so normal with interpersonal bullshit, he can't worry about it enough to keep from being lulled back to sleep.

When he wakes up the alarm clock is telling him it's 12:58 pm and Eduardo is laying in bed next to him. Not under the covers, just stretched out on the duvet in his boxer shorts. He's asleep, Mark thinks, all stretched out and mostly bare. Available for inspection and analysis. Mark makes the most of the opportunity to look. He looks good, wiry muscle making him seem a little less thin with his clothes off. His skin is mostly just smooth, not much hair, but some. Dark hair sprinkled on his chest and down his stomach, disappearing into his shorts. On his arms. And, weird, there's makeup, or something, smeared on his arms, but it's half washed off, and underneath...

Mark stops the inspection there. Under the makeup, the skin on his arms is marked visibly in the bright light, the veins too dark and bruised looking, like something's broken inside.

Mark props himself up to get a better look, and tries to remember where he's seen something like that before. His Nana, after too many rounds of chemo, thin arms, her veins obliterated and scarred from all the injections. He frowns and reaches out without thinking, touching the thin skin of Eduardo's inner elbow, on the left side. It's the worst there.

“What,” he mumbles, mostly to himself, but the touch makes Eduardo stiffen up and come awake, dark eyes blinking at him. “You didn't get chemo, did you?” Mark asks, because for a second that's all that makes sense.

Eduardo stares at him. Follows his gaze down. His mouth twitches into an expression Mark doesn't like. He looks tired, strained. There's red in his eyes, like he'd barely slept before Mark just dragged him back awake. “No,” he says and his voice is low, as strained as the rest of him. “I didn't get chemo.” There's a long moment of silence and Mark is ready to ask again when Eduardo just blurts out, “Heroin, okay? Other stuff, but that was the one that... with needles. Not now, though. Don't think I'm a-- it's been a while. Nine months since the last time.”

Mark has a million questions all jostling each other for space. Why? What for? He doesn't understand, can't fathom. He can just stare at Eduardo, on the bed next to him, flinching before Mark can even say a word like he can hear all those questions that haven't been asked, and finally, what comes out is, “But they'll fade. Those marks. Right?”

Eduardo's face smooths over, like Mark actually said the right thing, and he nods. “Yes. Yeah. It takes a while, but as long as I don't-- that-- anymore. They'll fade.” He pauses, like still he's trying to psychically divine the questions that Mark isn't asking, and then he comes up with one that hasn't even occurred to Mark to wonder about yet. “I'm clean, by the way. I mean, not sick with anything contagious. I got, I still get tested, after, every few months. I don't have anything, so if we... you'd be safe. You don't have to worry.”

“Okay,” Mark says. He yawns and stares back at the clock. “Go back to sleep, unless you have to be somewhere.” Eduardo shrugs and stares at him, like he can't think of anything to say. “Really,” Mark says, emphatically. “It's okay. Sleep, 'Wardo.”

“Eduardo,” Eduardo says, but he doesn't really sound upset anymore, just tired again. Mark wonders how much he sleeps, normally. “I don't think I can sleep now. Too wound up. I should probably get goi--”

Mark thinks about Eduardo's house, the bad vibes of the place and his father and track marks. Unanswered, unasked questions. “You should stay,” he says. “Stay here. I'll order room service. You won't be in the way, don't worry. Nothing is in the way when I'm wired in and working.”

Eduardo doesn't say anything, but he lets himself be pushed back down on the bed. Mark calls room service and then settles back down by his laptop, google open in front of him. He doesn't enter in any search terms, though. Eduardo is curled up on the bed, under the blankets, finally. His eyes are closed and his breathing is slow, even.

“Why?” Mark asks. His voice pops out too loud, too high. He doesn't like it. Eduardo's eyes open, dark, dark, with darker circles underneath. He doesn't sit up, though.

“Why start? Or why stop?” he asks.

Mark honestly doesn't know. He doesn't even know that he actually wants to hear the answer. He rubs his forehead with his palm. “Whichever one you want to tell me.”

“Because. Same reason, really.” That's not an answer, but Eduardo closes his eyes again and pulls the blankets up over his head, making himself invisible. He stays there and Mark stares at the screen of his laptop. He enters _IV drug use risks_ into google and stares when the results come up. No wonder Eduardo wanted to tell him he wasn't sick with anything, Jesus. Jesus.

They don't talk because Eduardo is either pretending to be or genuinely asleep until room service knocks on the door. It's a young looking woman with a giant tray of what's probably everything on the menu because Mark didn't know what Eduardo would like. Eduardo crawls out of bed, blanket wrapped around his shoulders and arms and smiles at her, soft, polite. He thanks her in Portuguese and she smiles back, looking charmed.

They eat and talk about marketing numbers. Eduardo seems to know an awfully lot about marketing numbers for someone who might not even have finished high school. Probably more than the guys Mark has working for him. Then Mark goes back to work and Eduardo pulls out a book from somewhere or other and settles into reading it.

Letty calls a while after that, because there are yet another set of meetings to go through and she's seen enough of Mark to realize that, yes, he probably does need to be reminded to shower and change. So, he goes into the bathroom, flips on the shower, and calls Chris.

“Hey, it's been so many hours since we last talked I thought you might have been kidnapped by circus dwarfs or dead in a car accident. I was about to send out a search party. You never go this long without calling the office. What's up?” Circus dwarfs, Mark thinks, really?

But what he says is, “So. Eduardo Saverin.”

“Who?” Now Chris is the one who sounds confused.

“Brazilian national, dual citizenship with the US, I'm 90% sure. His dad's one of the investors I met. I need you to find things out about him.” Mark doesn't bother to feel remotely bad about it. If his read on Eduardo is anything close to accurate, the guy has already done plenty of his own research on Mark before they ever met.

There's a pause from Chris. “Want to tell me why?”

“No,” Mark says. “But if anyone asks why I need to know, I'm looking to recruit him for Facebook. Something in finance or marketing. I need a thorough background check-- definitely let me know if anything funky turns up with immigration.”

“Mark, seriously, you have to give me a little bit more to go on if--”

“Not now, later, possibly. Try not to get Dustin involved if you can help it, he can't keep his mouth shut. We'll talk.” Mark flips his phone closed and turns off the volume, anticipating an immediate call back. Then he shucks his clothes and steps into the shower.

When he comes out of the bathroom and fumbles for his clothes, Eduardo looks up from the book he's been reading. “You're going to wear a tie?” he asks. There's a faint smile on his face.

“Yeah, why not?” Mark says, even though he hadn't been because he has no clue how to put one on. How hard can it be, though? He's the guy who invented Facebook, every overprivileged idiot who couldn't come close to his genius can still tie a tie.

Eduardo watches him make the attempt like it's a spectator sport. The little asshole. He doesn't laugh, though, which is something. Instead he puts his book down and walks over with the world weary air of someone who knows exactly what he's doing.

“Here,” he says. “Let me help you with that.” And then he's right there, fingers warm and steady and sliding the tangled up tie off of Mark before straightening it out and reapplying. He's close enough for Mark to smell his breath-- which is notable since this is the first time he doesn't smell like booze of any kind. But, more importantly, there's this furrowed up look of intense concentration, like tying this ridiculous scrap of cloth is interesting and important and worthy of Eduardo's complete attention.

By the time Eduardo takes a step back, tongue peeking out of the corner of his mouth as if he was just concentrating very hard, and looking completely satisfied with the results of whatever he just did, Mark may actually be a little... yeah, interested. Fuck, this is practically the same expression Eduardo wore after giving a killer, brains sucked out of balls blow job. And hell, thank god for baggy pants. Especially with the totally unnecessary lip licking.

“You want to come with me? To the investor's dinner, I mean?” Hell, Eduardo would probably be better at that kind of thing than Mark.

But he just smiles and shakes his head. “Not a good idea. They'd know me and it would be... awkward. Besides, I have some things I need to take care of.”

“You're leaving?” Mark does not like the unexpected squeak in his voice. “You should stay.”

The furrow in Eduardo's brow smooths and he shrugs. “If you want. There's nothing I can't do remotely, I guess.” So, it's agreed.

***

It's the middle of the night by the time Mark comes back to the hotel room, kind of tipsy from too many toasts at another damn party with nothing to do but drink. He barely stops to brush his teeth before he crawls into bed. Eduardo's there, in his bed, which he had not completely expected, and that's... interesting.

He's yawning before his head hits the pillow, just worn out, so when it happens at first he's not sure if he isn't dreaming. Eduardo, is, he thinks, asleep already, until suddenly, he's not.

There are sounds, soft, miserable sounds, and at first Mark things, Wardo's crying, but no, he can't be, he's asleep. He's dreaming, not crying.

“Eduardo,” Mark whispers, and he reaches out with a tentative hand to touch Eduardo's shoulder. He can feel too warm skin and the sharp edges of bone softened by muscle. “Hey, you're dreaming, wake up. Wardo?”

“Who... oh, Mark?” Eduardo hisses and his eyes flicker open. His lashes look wet in the mostly dark room and his eyes look like black holes in one of the cheesy sci-fi flicks someone made him watch in college.

“Yeah. Hey, are you okay?” Obvious questions are obvious.

There's a moment of nothing and then he hears a low, shuddery breath, sucked in slowly. Eduardo's sitting up, struggling with the sheets and blankets. Moonlight shines on his bare chest. “No,” he says. “No. I want to... we should have sex. You want to, I know that you want to, don't think I can't fucking tell.”

Mark closes his mouth when he realizes it's hanging open. “Wardo, wait, what--”

Eduardo's shaking his head. He inches closer, not quite touching, but close enough for the heat under his skin to radiate. “You think it won't be good, is that the problem? I know you said you haven't before, but it would be good, it would be better than anyone else you could find. Anyone else on this damn continent. You liked it when I blew you, don't act like you didn't.”

Mark swallows hard, feeling the pressure in his throat. This shit doesn't happen to him. It doesn't. “I did, but... you don't, you...”

It's like something gets released then, because Eduardo is fast and close and just... on him, this lanky column of rage and fear, all knees and elbows and he's too big to fight off without, like, kneeing him in the balls, even if Mark wanted to try. “I do, though. I do. You don't know how I feel. We need to do this,” he hisses into Mark's ear. “We need to seal the deal, okay?”

“I'm going to help you no matter what. You don't have to--” But his hands are on Mark's chest and then his mouth is on Mark's, and hey, this is their first kiss, isn't it? It's wet and rough, rougher than he expected. Eduardo feels like he's everywhere, the harsh breathe of something desperate in every touch. And Mark can't remember ever being this hard before unless he was less than a second from coming. He makes a noise that doesn't even sound like a person's and arches his hips up, eager for contact.

“I want to...” Eduardo grits out, emphatically, absolutely certain. He's obviously still got his words, fuck him. “I mean, we can't mess around and be fuzzy with these things. It doesn't work, Mark. It won't work.”

And then he pushes down, graceful arc of neck and arms, and he's pressing another kiss onto Mark's mouth, like all he wants is to lick it open. “Wardo,” Mark tries, but fuck, he's not a robot, he's a guy with someone he's desperately attracted to all over him. He can't, it's so much, it's like that bathroom stall at that dance club, but better, because now he knows things about this person and the way he smiles and knots ties and stupid shit, and he wants, he _wants_ him.

And that, of course, is when his 'Dustin' ringtone goes off and the cellphone on the table starts vibrating. The incredibly annoying singing frog one that Dustin programmed into his phone when he'd smoked too much homegrown weed and thought it was funny and that Mark had never gotten around to removing. _Singing fucking frog_.

Mark jumps for the phone, probably to murder it in Dustin's proxy before he even realizes he's been let up, that Eduardo's not holding him down anymore. He turns around, still clutching the goddamned phone while the frog croaks out an aria, just in time to see the bathroom door slam, presumably with Eduardo on the other side of it. Fuck.

“What?” he hisses into the phone. On the other end of the line, Dustin coughs. “If you're calling to tell me that my website crashed...”

“What?” Dustin asks. “No. And why are you so pissed all of the sudden, what, am I interrupting your alone time with farmville or something? Wet dreams about tagging?”

“No,” Mark bites out. The bathroom door remains firmly closed. He can hear water start running heavily. Shower, not the sink. “What is it, Dustin?”

“Dude, way to be a supportive boss after I run down data for you. I'm just calling to ask if you know why your new friend got expelled from high school? It was not easy to find out, believe me.”

“I have no idea what you-- wait, I specifically told Chris not to involve you in this.” Mark could sort of see headlines. The Gawker probably ate this kind of shit up. Dustin would probably tell them before noon tomorrow and it would probably be a complete accident.

“And I resent that. A lot. Chris said this job needed someone trustworthy with some kind of liberal understanding or privacy and security. How is that not me? Anyway, do you want to hear what I know or what? It's good!”

Amazing how 'good' could take on the connotations of terrifying so easily. Huh. “Is it?”

Dustin's tone basically transmits glee. “Apparently, he sold illicit substances to the headmaster's daughter, and then was caught, ahem, in flagrante, with her, which means in the, ahem, 'act'. In her parents' hottub. In their backyard. Eating out the headmaster's underage daughter in her parents' backyard, man. Dude, it would practically be worthy of Sean if he weren't underage too at the time.”

Mark tries to picture this. It is actually not very difficult. His dick remembers that Eduardo was practically grinding into it, oh, just now, and it gets even easier. “Okay,” he says. “That's a very high level of detail, thank you. What else?”

“What, that's not enough?” Mark lets the silence speak for him and Dustin laughs over the line. “Yeah, yeah, I'm working on it. I just thought you'd appreciate a progress report. Are you really going to hire this guy or is there something else going on? Mark?”

“Why not?” Mark mutters and then ends the call without saying goodbye. The water in the bathroom is still running, full throttle. He picks his way over in that direction like someone might have had time to plant mines in the plush carpeting. Slow and steady.

He's about to knock on the door, when the water shuts off abruptly. “Eduardo?” he asks cautiously. “Um. Are you okay?”

There's a pause, one that last long enough that Mark contemplates whether or not he'd look like more or less of an idiot if he tried to break the door down. Then there's a voice from the other side of the door. Eduardo sounds completely normal and not at all freaked out, which is possibly unfair.

“An aria in frog rib-bits? Really, man? Because that's not right.”

“The person who inspired that ringtone is not right, so it works out,” Mark replies without thinking about it. He gets a short laugh from the other side of the door.

“Can I ask you a serious question?” Eduardo calls out, and Mark thinks, more ribbing about ringtones, awesome, but before he even answers, Eduardo asks, “Seriously, you like guys, but you've never fucked before? You've fucked girls, though, right?” Eduardo sounds like he still can't believe it, like it's too much to wrap his brain around.

Mark rolls his eyes. This from the guy who apparently ate out the headmaster's daughter in high school, awesome. He probably had them lining up around the block. “Yeah, we can't all be perfect like you, Wardo, sorry.”

“Perfect?” Eduardo sounds confused, like he's lost the thread of their conversation and Mark has no idea why. This wasn't complicated, was it? “How perfect?”

Mark snorts. Like it's not obvious, just looking at him. “You know. Hot. Good at sex. Not a twenty-one year old almost virgin.”

There's a pause, a blank one, like Eduardo lost his words and needs a moment to find them again. Then he seems to find the on-switch and talks and Mark feels the bottom fall out of his stomach with a dizzying flop. “It wasn't perfect, the first time. It was the worst thing that ever happened. I mean... not in the world, obviously. There are tsunamis and wars and earthquakes and starving babies. It wasn't as bad as those things. But to me. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me.”

Mark's wished for conversational rewinds before, but this is sort of... he doesn't even know. “I-- I don't. I--”

There's a soft, breathy sigh that makes Mark realize just how thin the door separating them is. Or maybe it's just that he has his ear pressed against it all of the sudden. He feels young and dumb, which he can't remember the last time he felt that, and like his stomach hurts.

“Yeah, I...” Eduardo says and then he coughs, like he doesn't know either. “Do you think whoever recorded the frogs singing arias and thought to themselves, 'I know, ringtone!' deserves an award or a lynch-mob? Because they deserve something. Possibly cattleprods?”

Mark makes a noise, something between a laugh and a sob. “Are we going to talk about my ringtone collection now?”

Another long pause. “...yes? Extensively. I can make you a spreadsheet.”

“Oh. Yeah. Good.” Then the door opens so fast that Mark almost falls over. Eduardo looks completely normal and calm, other than the fact his face and hair are wet, which is more than not fair.

 

In the morning, Mark wakes up and Eduardo is not there. At first Mark's kind of hopeful that just means he got bored of room service and went to get breakfast somewhere else, but there's a note taped to the door in Eduardo's unduly legible handwriting.

It's very helpful. It says, _Errands. See you later._ Mark makes a face at it and turns it over. The other side contains a hand-drawn graph, which on close inspection, appears to be a rating of all the ringtones on Mark's phone based on sound quality versus introduction of homicidal/suicidal ideation into the psyche. Frogs are at the top of the list. At the bottom, in handwriting so light it's almost an afterthought, it says _I'm sorry_.

“Why are you sorry? You need serious mental help,” Mark tells the note, as if it were Eduardo himself, or at least a direct conduit to the guy. He tries to imagine Eduardo sitting down to do this while he was asleep and then he tries to reconcile that with the guy who kissed him and hid behind the bathroom door and said horrible shit like, _it would be good, it would be better than anyone else you could find_ and _it was the worst thing that ever happened_. And it was actually true that Eduardo needed serious mental help, and that was because someone had literally driven him crazy, with deliberate intent.

This was a guy who laughed with you and not at you when he tied your goddamned tie and made spreadsheets about fucking ringtones and rubbed your back when you fell asleep at the computer and just... someone had made him this whole level of not okay and just thinking about it was making Mark's headache. He didn't normally waste a lot of time hating people or even being pissed off at specific ones, because humanity as a whole consumed enough of his irritation that there just wasn't space for individuals, but this was... he had no _context_ for this.

If this were one of those HBO mob dramas his sisters are into, he'd know exactly what to do, but it's not and he doesn't even know where you get mob hitmen anyway, even though he probably can afford one. Huh. Instead he calls Letty on the phone and says, “I want to meet with Mr. Saverin again.”

Letty sighs at him, like he's making her tired, but she says she'll arrange it. She pauses, though, right when it sounded like she was about to hang up the phone. “If you're sure, Mark,” she says. “I had the impression you didn't care for him.” But then she arranges it, with the caveat that, “It's a public location, a lunch meeting really, so you won't be able to discuss anything confidential.” She doesn't say anything else, though.

The thing is, Mark doesn't actually have a fully fledged plan. That's why he'd told his minions to go do some research, figure out the best angle of approach. But somehow plans don't matter right now, after all, he's a goddamned genius, he figures he'll make it up as he goes.

That's how he ends up in an almost empty, but not at all private cafe across from the person he would most like to kick in the face. The guy is still oily, worse than, insinuating, saying things like, “I hope you are enjoying our country's hospitality. Has it been pleasurable?”

“Oh, great,” Mark says, steady, like it's nothing. He thinks maybe what he wants to do is bring up all of this guy's private information and throw it at the world, everything, trade secrets, mistress' favorite underwear, passwords, whatever. But he's not sure Eduardo would want that. No, Eduardo had asked him for something more specific, right? “It's been great, but I'm not looking for like, a short term lease here,” Mark says and he can feel himself grin, fixed teeth, almost sharklike. “I'm really more interested in a permanent arrangement. One that would involve you losing his number and never bothering him again.”

Yeah, and that doesn't go over well. But, hey, it's a good thing they're in public, because the guy can't actually strangle Mark.

It's later-- no idea how much, because Mark's still re-defining the phrase 'red with fury', but not too much because he's still just about running down the streets weaving through pedestrians and bicyclists and psychotic motorists when his phone rings, number unknown.

The voice on the other end of the line is Eduardo's and it doesn't even occur to Mark to ask how he got the number, he's just that glad to hear from him. “Hey, hey are you all right?”

There's a pause, but Eduardo's voice sounds fine. “Yeah. Sure. Listen, I heard what you did... what you said. To my father...”

Maybe, in the back of Mark's brain, an alarm bell starts to go off, but he thinks, damn, Eduardo's father must have... “Yeah. I did. I--”

Eduardo's obviously more interested in talking then listening because he says, “Yeah, see, the thing is, you should know I'm not actually looking to trade ownership here. That's not what this is about. You should understand that.”

Mark shakes his head, even though he's on the phone, no one can see him, “That's not... that's just a metaphor, Wardo. I don't actually mean--”

There's a laugh, but weirdly, it's a nice one, not a 'Mark's a dickhead one'. It doesn't really help Mark feel better. “No, I know you don't. I just want you to understand what this is. _You're_ not staging a hostile takeover. _I'm_ rising up and usurping the means of production. And by the way, I really am sorry. You're more... I really expected you to be more of an entitled dick than you actually are.”

Alarm bells? Maybe more like alarm klaxons. Red fucking alert. “Wait. _This_ , what--” But the call drops-- or is dropped, more than likely. Mark redials the number and gets a big nothing. Not even a goddamned voicemail box. He tries it again, but another nothing. Then his phone vibrates, a text message. Fucking Dustin.

 _Yr new bf + haedmastr's hotty. Yum, chicken._ There's an image with it, a grainy picture like it's been scanned from somewhere. There's Eduardo in it, looking young and bony and strung out, but smoothly perfect anyway, with his arm around a tall, too damned familiar girl. Younger, but obviously still she of the terrifyingly clicky high-heeled shoes. Mark stares down at her.

“Letty, you horrible, lying bitch. Fuck you he's the kind of trouble I don't need,” he hisses and dials her number.

He isn't even surprised when it's not Letty who picks up on the other end. When it's Eduardo who sighs into the phone, like of course he's answering her calls. “You don't have a big part left, so don't worry, man. Just remember that you're a big shot American businessman, they don't have any evidence and they can't really touch you no matter what they say.”

“Wait... who can't touch me? Wardo? Eduardo? What the hell did you do?”

“Watch and learn.” There's a short, painful laugh, then a pause. “Don't blame this on Letty, she was just trying to help me, okay? Anyway... goodbye, Mark.” But Mark can still hear Eduardo breathing on the other end of the line. He hasn't hung up again yet.

“No, this is not goodbye,” Mark says. Shouts really. “I am going to find you, don't even bother trying to--” but then there's a click and silence.

Mark's not even surprised when there are cops waiting for him at his hotel room. They're polite motherfuckers, he'll give them that. Just want to ask him 'a few questions' after his very public altercation with Saverin.

 _Watch and learn_ , Eduardo said. Mark's watching.

 

At the police station they tell them to call his consulate before they ask any serious questions about whatever it is they want to question him on, but he calls Chris instead. Chris sounds worried, but not surprised, which sort of pisses Mark off. If other people were expecting this, they might have bothered to let him know.

“He's got sad eyes and broad shoulders. I do see the appeal,” Chris says and Mark kind of wants to hit him a little.

“Great, but tell me what he did. I'm in fucking lock up and I don't have a computer.” For some value of lock-up where there are are comfortable chairs and everyone is nervous and nice to him, but he is very pissed off about the computer.

“You'd better talk to Dustin, I'm going to call the Consulate and have them send you a lawyer. Don't worry, we'll figure this out.”

“Dustin, why would I possibly want to talk to Dustin?” Mark mutters. He is not grinding his teeth.

“Because, he can tell you as much as I can, but he's not going to do you any good talking to the Consulate,” Chris says, which is probably true. Mark drums his fingers against one thigh and stares at the posters on the wall.

“Mark, old buddy, so, I finished running the background check, and I don't know how to tell you this,” Dustin says. He actually sounds worried too. That is not encouraging. Not at all.

“Spit it out,” Mark mutters into the phone. “At this point, what can it hurt?” He's already sitting in the sweaty-hot bowels of a police station in a country where he doesn't speak the language, how much worse can it even be?

There's a nervous sounding cough on the line. “Yeah. I don't know how you managed this, but you've inserted yourself into the middle of one of those '70's rape-revenge exploitation flicks. Also, I'm pretty sure it's about to be Act III. You haven't done anything to deserve to be chopped up with a chainsaw, have you? Please say no.”

Mark covers his face with his palm and clutches his phone. His palm is sticky with his own sweat, and really unpleasant. “I don't know what that means,” he says.

“I feel like your film education was so deficient and I'm responsible,” Dustin sighs. “Come on. I Spit On Your Grave? Lady Snowblood? Frigga One Eye? We are so having a movie marathon, assuming you get out of this without being beheaded or eviscerated or permanently locked up in a third world prison.”

“When I get home you're fired. Just so you know. What the hell are you talking about?”

“Right, right. Okay,” Dustin sounds like he might be trying to get to the point, so Mark lets him talk. “Act I is the part where your innocent girl... but it can be a guy, I mean, holy fuck, Deliverance, right? Is brutally violated. Very gory and nasty, that's why they call them exploitation flicks, right and then...”

“Do you have a point?” Mark demands. Because Wardo and that... he doesn't really want to think about that.

“Yes. Act II, the innocent survives and recovers and possibly goes to a Buddhist monastery to learn superpowers of ultraviolence. Does this Eduardo guy have any superpowers? Because that would be cool, I think that--”

“Dustin.”

“I think that however much you wish you could, you can't strangle me through the telephone. I love technology. Anyway, that brings us to Act III, in which our powered up innocent returns, possibly with a chainsaw, a machine gun, superpowers or d, all of the above and wreaks bloody havoc on everyone who fucked with her. Him. You know what I mean. Now do you see what you missed by coding during movie nights?”

“I'm pretty sure Eduardo doesn't have a chainsaw or a shotgun, at least not on him,” Mark says, because, no, that kid's pants are too tight. And then he has to lose a few seconds visualizing this. “Where would he put it?”

“No, not a literal chainsaw, though you never know, man. What I can tell you is that some of the biggest companies in Sao Paulo, hell in Brazil, and that includes a few multi-nationals, sent through a massive set of financial transaction over the last few hours. The internet practically lit up.” Dustin sounds impressed, which is in itself a little bit impressive.

“Fuck,” Mark mutters. “I need my computer.” It's probably a little bit sick to think this way, and he's holding his judgment until he has all the data, but if he's right and Eduardo Saverin is in the middle of pulling off one of the most stupendous revenge hacks in history...

Okay, he might be just a tiny bit in love. Assuming he's not set up to be the fall guy and go to jail for this, of course. It could happen.

**Interlude**

When he comes in, the boy is lying on his stomach on the couch, scribbling on a tatty looking yellow pad. Up close his scrawl resolves itself into numbers and letters. Algebraic equations of some kind. It doesn't matter. The boy looks up and raises an eyebrow at him... he never used to do that.

“That American is a deluded fool,” he tells the boy. “He imagines himself in love with you.”

The boy shrugs and rolls over so that he's in a sitting position. He's smiling. It is not... pleasant, but it is hard to say why. “Hello, Pai. Does he?” he asks.

“It doesn't do you any credit. He wants to buy you from me, did you know that?” It's almost curious to see the expressions slide over his face, one by one. Large, bright eyes, like his mother's, showing too much.

“Does he?” the boy repeats. He pulls the yellow pad up onto his knees and draws another line of something. He's still smiling. “Well, then, maybe you should check with your bank. You might learn something very interesting.”

The boy's a fool-- what could possibly be happening at his bank? But there's something about that smile, something off, and that American boy was very angry... could he? Could the boy have seduced him that far, that quickly?

He paces out of the room, ignoring the boy. He's in no hurry, but perhaps... perhaps he should check, just to be certain. What he sees... what he sees rocks him back on his heels and leaves him clutching his stomach. The numbers, raw and endless and fucking missing, it is unfathomable.

“The fucking American!” he tells himself. Who else could it be? He's a computer wizard, and one in a rage. It was probably nothing at all for him to hack the accounts. Well, the bastard won't get away with it, whatever he and that delusional boy of his think they might accomplish, not in Brazil, not on his own homeground.

His vision is still red tinged with rage when he dials his contact in the police. No one is going to get away with a damned thing. The American probably thinks his passport entitles him to the world, but he's about to learn differently.

By the time he hangs up the phone, he feels calmer, better. He's stopped the scheme in its tracks, of that he has no doubt. He's even humming to himself, smiling a little, when he walks back into the hall. The boy is still there, but now he has his shoes and jacket on, and he's sliding an old laptop into a messenger bag.

“Do you think you're going somewhere, you little shit?” he demands and the sense of calm just evaporates as quickly as it settled. The damned boy never lets him have any peace. “Going to run off with your new master? Good luck finding him in prison, because I have the police down on him after that little hacking trick. Hell, maybe I'll have you join him, they have a holding cell just for the whores.”

Once, maybe years ago, the boy would have blushed or flinched and stammered but now he just stares back with those damned, dark eyes. There's nothing reflected in them, nothing. “That was exactly what I needed you to do, thank you,” the boy says. “It won't take them long to find out Mark didn't have anything to do with the money vanishing. And then, then they'll start to wonder who did. Who do you think?” He's smiling, smiling, that stupid, affable smile.

He can barely breathe. “You... you...”

“No, you have it all wrong, Pai,” the boy says, shaking his head. “Me? Your pathetic little whore? You've certainly convinced all your friends I am, do you think now they're going to believe it was me? Especially when they trace eighty percent of the money to an account in Grand Cayman set up in _your_ name. You did a good job trying to hide it, by the way, but not good enough. Tsk.”

“Stupid shit, why would I steal my own money!” he takes a step closer, but the boy doesn't flinch back.

“Presumably to throw the suspicion off yourself when every major corporation you've ever done business with finds itself missing millions. Which,” the boy pauses, looking down at his watch. “They'll be finding out, oh... any second now. That's also why you accused poor Mark, I'm sure. Poor man, and he was getting ready to really invest in our country.”

“You couldn't... you could not...” It is not possible, not that sniveling thing he had for a son. It's a lie. Fuck, it's probably a scheme the American dreamed up and he's using the boy... fuck, how long must it have taken to plan this.

The boy finishes pressing the laptop into the messenger bag and zips it closed. “No, of course not. Your friends won't believe it. They'll know exactly who is the right person to blame. I can't help but think it's sad, trying to deflect it all onto the poor hapless American and, god knows, your pathetic offspring.”

It's hard to breathe. There's heat he feel in his face and the boy stops, frowns, staring for a second like he sees it too. “You're not going to have a heart attack, are you? Shall I call your doctor?”

“Fuck you,” he hisses.

The boy shrugs. “Yeah, fine, then.” He shoulders his bag, and then stops once again. “I should just go, but... you know what was the worst part, for me, when you sold me off like I wasn't anything to you? When he-- in my own fucking bedroom and no one even said anything. You all heard and pretended like it hadn't even happened. And then it was off to school and no one even knew so they didn't have to pretend, it was like the end of the world happened and I was the only one who knew it was real. I think... if everyone else thinks the world is one way, but you think it's a different way, you're probably crazy, not them, right?

“And now, you can feel that too, because you'll know exactly how this went down, but, Pai, the rest of the world? They will think you are crazy if you try to put any of this on me, especially given where the evidence points. They will know this is the truth, because you convinced them of that yourserlf. And, fuck, they could be right... ”

The boy pauses. Coughs. “Yeah, that was a long speech, wasn't it? I really just wanted to tell you that. I-- well, that's it, I suppose. Any last words to say to me?” he asks. For a moment, that evil smile fades and he looks wide open again, almost hopeful, almost like his goddamned mother. As if he is anything but thieving scum. Just like that dewy-eyed, weak-willed mess that should never have been born.

Say? He has so damn much he wants to say, he can't get it into one breath. “I should have pulled you out of your mother's womb before you were ever born, you fucking parasite. If I had a gun on me know, I'd correct the error. You are worse than nothing.”

“Oh.” The boy breathes out, slow and noisy. “Yes. I suppose an apology would have been too much to hope for. Well, tell Mãe that I-- never mind, she won't remember anyway. Seriously, call the doctor about your heart, too. Prison isn't going to be good for it.” He sighs, rubs his face with his palm, and then turns around and walks right out the door.

There's a car waiting for him at the end of the road, but his pace is steady getting to it. He doesn't run and he doesn't look back.

***

When the lawyer and the consulate representative turn up, Mark finally learns what this is about. Money, a lot of it (they don't say how much, but between this and Dustin's information, he can sort of see the string of zeros).

The thing is, as he tells them very pointedly, he has plenty of money. More than. He doesn't need to go around stealing it. That would be a waste of efforts better directed to other endeavors.

He's not sure if the fact he tells them that in a foreign language helps or hurts his case, actually, but the lawyer seems to be pretty good, because it's only a few hours before he's back outside with everyone's sincerest apologies.

He doesn't get the whole picture until much later, because by the time he's in front of a laptop with the wherewithal to look, Eduardo Saverin has already crossed about a dozen borders, probably changed his name somewhere along the line, and is gone. That's okay, no one in the world really disappears, not these days.

 

**Singapore**

It takes three months and lots of weird looks around the office when he spends a lot of his wired in time not strictly coding, but hey, he's there when Facebook needs him. In the end it's a badly (or well, from Mark's point of view) timed border crossing that helps him pinpoint Eduardo-- or rather the place Eduardo is about to be-- and he's on the next plane. The flight is something like perfect, since it times his arrival to be near enough to exactly on schedule with Eduardo's.

It's a thrill when he finally see him though, a rush that he hasn't felt since he was a student back in Kirkland, in Palo Alto in the early days, just starting to make Facebook real. Mark hasn't even noticed he misses the old rush until he feels it again, adrenaline bright and making his head buzz. Eduardo brings it back again.

He just sees him from the back, at first. Eduardo's wearing a dark, formal looking suit that makes him look a little broader and a little older, but that's probably a put on, it hasn't been that long. He's not looking around, just striding forward like someone with all the time in the world, and Mark takes a second just to enjoy breathing the same air as him.

When he's used up all of that rush, and before Eduardo can disappear toward baggage claim or a taxi, Mark hurries after him.

“Hey, Wardo! Singapore, huh? What's in Singapore?” Marks calls and grins when Eduardo jumps about a foot, like he wasn't expecting anyone to come up behind him and start talking. Most likely, he wasn't, not at the Changi Airport in fucking Singapore.

Eduardo turns around and has an expression that Mark tells himself is delight. Who wouldn't be delighted? “You're in Singapore, clearly,” Eduardo says. He takes a moment to process this new information. “Huh, how about that?”

Mark shrugs. “I told you I'd find you. I mean, you're really good, and I don't say that to a lot of people, but this is one way I'm better.”

“Are you?” But Eduardo's got a twitchy little smile on his face. He leans back, just a little and slides his hands into his pockets.

Mark looks him over and wonders if he missed something. He doesn't think he has. “Well, I'm here. That was the challenge, right? Or were you just being facetious when you told me to watch and learn?”

Eduardo laughs out loud, shaking his head at the same time, like it's all just too much. “Are you asking because you think you had my permission to stalk me around the globe? That's a little terrifying, man.” He doesn't look terrified, though. He looks... wide eyed, yes, but his lips are curled up when he laughs, like maybe he's not unhappy.

Mark just looks at him. “You shouldn't throw down challenges if you don't want me to pick them up.”

Eduardo shakes his head but his smile doesn't phase. “To be honest, I thought you'd be onto the next thing by now, but-- Oh, hell, I mean to say... hi. Hello.”

“My attention span is going to shock and amaze you.” And that's another point where some people, some of the few people to whom Mark has previously tried to devote that attention span to in the past have decided they weren't interested in moving in that direction. Eduardo just keeps on looking surprised.

“Huh,” Eduardo mutters and then something else under his breathe that sounds a little like, “Why the fuck not, I deserve this.” Then, louder. “Well, just don't get bored and wander off between here and my hotel room.”

This is in no way an invitation that Mark feels like saying no to.

They take a cab over to Eduardo's hotel. There's space between them on the ride and Eduardo watches him carefully from under his lashes, like he's still not sure what's happening when it really should be obvious.

It takes most of the ride over for him to actually ask, “You're not even angry at me, are you? For the thing with the cops.” Like this is some amazing thing, like he can't quite believe that Mark would be anything but mad.

Mark can only blink and shake his head. “Why would I be?” But Eduardo is still just looking at him, so Mark sighs and explains what is so burningly clear to him. “It obviously wasn't personal and it only created a minor inconvenience on my end. Asking me first and trying to explain what you needed me to do would have created too many unknown, uncontrollable variables in your situation and increased the risk of catastrophic failure. That would have been stupid. Clearly, you're not stupid. I wouldn't be bothering with this if you were.”

There's a long, long stretch of silence while Eduardo just stares at him blankly, like an ill-advised dinner date who had no idea what he was getting into. It makes Mark's stomach churn, all dull and acidic, wondering if maybe he hadn't gotten this wrong, wasn't reading Eduardo all wrong. It wouldn't be the first time.

Then, just like that, Eduardo grins at him, burnished and brilliant and full of something Mark doesn't quite get, but likes the look of. “I don't know how you're even real, it's like someone built you in a lab, man,” Eduardo says, which is the kind of thing that would be an insult from most people, but from Eduardo is immediately followed by the closing of the physical distance between them and a hard, melting kiss.

The kiss doesn't want to stop of it's own accord, not when Eduardo is up and in close, tongue slick, rubbery-sour taste of airline wine still on him. Why would it stop, when Mark's hands are cupping the back of Eduardo's neck and the hair there is so soft and blunt under his palms and the skin is warm, and hell, this is why people are so into kissing, probably. If the person they're kissing is anything like Eduardo, which probably 99.9% of the populace is not.

The taxi driver's coughing is the final interruption. Mark would have ignored the asshole, but Eduardo flushes and backs off. Anyway, they're where they need to be. They pay the guy off, Eduardo sliding him a bigger tip than Mark would have.

Eduardo's got the penthouse suite, and Mark wonders vaguely just how many zeros really were involved in that massive set of transactions back in Brazil, but doesn't worry too much about it. They talk, but it's not important, something about humidity and something about jetlag, but it's not _important_.

“Come on,” Mark finally says. “Are we going to do this or what?”

And Eduardo's laughs without any meanness in it, and shows him the bed. They sit on it, and its firm, but not too much. Soft sheets. Expensive.

He watches Eduardo shrug off his jacket and unbutton his perfectly pressed, crisp white shirt. This requires concentration, these things are important, because later he'll want to play back the way Wardo removes his cufflinks and how his wrists look when he puts his hands on buttons. He's seen him naked before, but the process of getting naked, that's something too, novel, and Mark wants all of it.

Eduardo smiles at the regard, and it's hard to say if there's anything self-conscious in the smile. It doesn't stop him from toeing off his shoes and pants until he's naked on the bed, all long lines and the vivid tanned smoothness of his skin. Even the places where the smoothness breaks are important, old scars and healing trackmarks, because that's Wardo too.

“You're really into me,” Eduardo says and he smiles, shaking his head. “I don't know if anyone's ever--”

“Good,” Mark says, because, he wants to be what no one else has been, that, too, is important. And okay, he's seen Eduardo and now he wants to touch, and know about that part. He leans forward.

They kiss, and that's easy. Eduardo looks at him, and that's even easier. Wide eyes. Wide, slim hands, turned careful, gentle. “Don't worry. It will be good. I promise.”

He's not worried, never occurred to him to be.

Eduardo has great fingers, clever with a pen, clever as hell cupping Mark's chin, sliding into Mark's mouth. “Come on, suck them for me.” And that's not bad, it's very good, long fingers, sweet. Mark licks them and shivers because he has some ideas of where this is going.

He doesn't remember how he gets naked himself, that's all Eduardo, his hands and mouth, and it's not important. It is good, about a thousand times less awkward than he'd expected, and Eduardo grins at him all through it, bright and affectionate. Getting his hands on Wardo's dick, fucking finally, is good, but feeling it inside is better and he's got a whole new appreciation for why people really enjoy the experience.

He falls asleep, sore and open and sated, with Eduardo's hands stroking through his hair like he can't believe his luck either, but that wouldn't make any sense.

When he wakes up, the sheets are tucked in around him and Eduardo and his things are both gone. But there's a Red Bull on the nightstand and note on his pillow. On the surface it appears to be a set of nonsense algorithms in Eduardo's careful handwriting. A quick overview reveals that it's a cipher and some number crunching decodes the message as simply, _Come and find me_.

Mark lets his head fall back against the soft, soft pillow and grins so wide he can feel his mouth stretch.

**Monaco**

He finds Eduardo in front of the casino, taking pictures of a Lamborghini like a tourist. That makes him laugh.

“Stop eyefucking it and just buy your own,” he calls. “Or I can buy one for you, Wardo.”

Eduardo spins around, grinning, delighted. “You found me,” he says. And then, “Yeah, I could, but I don't really have a permanent place to keep it.”

“Palo Alto? I have a garage, you know. My Prius is lonely there all by itself.”

Eduardo laughs into his hands, “Prius? Way to make me feel like conspicuous consumption man. Thanks, Mark.”

He doesn't say anything about Palo Alto, but Mark figures he knows the invitation is officially open.

**Jerusalem**

Mark's never had any opinions worth getting into about religion. He's had Hebrew school and been Bar Mitvahed, but he's pretty sure that was just his parents trying to socialize him as much as anything else. It's not something he really ever needed to worry about.

But a tease of an email from Eduardo comes through from Jerusalem, and that's practically an engraved invitation, so there he is in a cafe that offers wi-fi with its pastries on the outskirts of the old city. Eduardo's wearing one of his suits when he comes in, as if the sun wasn't blasting outside. If he weren't bare headed and clean shaven he could have almost passed for one of the Orthodox men in their black wool suit coats. Well, Eduardo's suit is probably linen and costs as much as twenty of theirs, but who's counting?

He looks wide eyed and weirdly bashful, something in the turn of his chin, but he smiles at Mark and says, “You came.” Like he'd made an outright invitation instead of strewing a breadcrumb like always.

Mark feels like he should be grumbling, but, hey, Eduardo's here in the same room and smiling at him and that always settles his mood . “Yeah. Don't pretend like you didn't know I would,” he says, even though sometimes he wonders.

Eduardo laughs and walks up close like he doesn't think Mark has personal space. He just tugs him by the arm and says, “I've always wanted to do this, but I didn't want to go alone. I know it's kind of weird.”

Mark finds out what 'this' is not going to be weird in the sense of kinky sex, per say, when they follow the signs to the western wall. He's never been before, never even thought of going, really, but suddenly it's there, just a rise of stone that's older than anything he's probably ever touched before and mobs of people in front of it.

There's a guy with a long beard who stops them before they can come up behind the barrier to make them cover their heads. There's something doubly surreal about seeing Eduardo in a _kippah_ , but, hey it's Eduardo. He rocks the thing, he'd probably look hot in a sack and hotter out of it.

“What are we going to do now?” he asks, because, hey, it's a wall. If you talk to it, it's not exactly going to answer back.

Eduardo just shrugs. He pulls something out of his pocket, a little square of bright white paper, all neatly folded up. “Just this,” he says. He walks up to the wall with quick, deliberate strides and then pushes his square of paper into one of the cracks.

“What's that?” Mark asks, and figures it's something he blanked out on in Hebrew school, because on close inspection the crevices in the wall are littered with paper. Like someone was using it as a giant note exchange board.

“Nothing,” Eduardo says, and his eyes are a little too bright. He rubs them with the back of his hand. “Just a thought I wanted to share. You know, with--” he looks up, pointedly.

Mark doesn't see the point of sharing thoughts with the wall. He almost goes back to take Eduardo's note out, see what it says, but there are too many notes and he can't remember which was one was Wardo's.

That night in a hotel room, stretched out on the bed with a laptop on one knee and Eduardo's cheek resting on the other breathing softly in his sleep, Mark remembers what the wall thing was about from school, and thinks, _Yeah. Oh._

From your lips to God's ears, is what his mother would probably say, but Mark's not her. He still doesn't have any real opinions about religion, but he figures if anyone deserves to have their prayers answered just because they wrote them down and stuck them in an old temple wall, it's probably Eduardo.

**London**

Mark is at a conference, but he gets distracted when a genius idea hits him and he has to code it before he loses it. He'd probably have missed the keynote speech (was is a shame, since he's supposed to be giving it), if Wardo hadn't been the one to find him this time.

He's not sure and doesn't ever remember to ask how Eduardo actually gets into his room. It's just that one minute he's coding furiously, headphones on and fully wired in, and the next there's a hand on his shoulder. He shrugs the hand off, it's harshing his chi, but it is a persistent hand. He is also persistent in ignoring outside input, and he tries very hard.

He's too lost in what he's doing to actually hear the frustrated sigh, but later he'll swear he could feel it. At any rate, that's when Eduardo apparently decides more desperate measures are called for-- which is to say insinuating himself between Mark and the desk, sliding between his legs.

Mark doesn't quite catch on to what's happening until his pants are unzipped with a firm, steady motion and then he quickly discovers that yes, there is one state of being that is completely antithetical to coding. That involves having Eduardo's mouth on his cock, licking a stripe down the underside from balls to tip. Blow jobs have become a lot more regular in his world since he's been chasing Eduardo around, but even regularity is apparently not enough to dull the impact. Huh.

He makes the speech on time, but barely, and the only reason his pants stay zipped up is that Eduardo remembered to close them. Eduardo watches him speak from the front row, eyes bright and happy looking and Mark doesn't look at anyone else the entire time.

**Kyoto**

Mark wakes up and sits bolt upright with a really awful thought suddenly the only thing he can think of. Eduardo is not-quite asleep next to him, grumbling and hiding under the pillow, probably annoyed when Mark's jerky wake up dislodged him.

Mark puts his hand on his shoulder and shakes him. “Wardo,” he hisses. “Wardo, wake up, I need to ask you something important.”

His response is a string of Portuguese curses. Mark's got enough Spanish to sort of decode them and they are nothing good, not at all. But, finally, finally, Eduardo rubs his eyes, yawns and turns a thin-slitted glare in Mark's direction. “Yes?” he grits out. “What?”

“I need to know-- is Letty your girlfriend?” Eduardo stares at him, like this is the most bizarre thing that has ever happened to him in his entire life, which Mark knows damn well isn't true. “Wardo--” he says.

There's another baleful glare, but when it breaks Eduardo is laughing at him. Long, and loud and kind of unflattering. “Ho-shit, I mean, I'm sorry but—” And then more laughter, headshaking and loud. When he gets it together he finally says, “What, seriously, are you only asking me this _now_? Like, right now, in the middle of the night after months of... you know?” But, when Mark ask him again, because it's important, goddammit he finally says, “No. Not since high school. She broke up with me.”

That is sort of reassuring but... doesn't make a lot of sense. The breaking up part. Who the hell would break up with Wardo? “Why would she do something crazy like that?”

Eduardo laughs again, but nicer this time. “I'll let you in on a time saving secret from Letty's mouth to your ears. Dating fucked up guys isn't as hot as it looks like it will be on television.”

Mark frowns. “That doesn't make any sense. I also don't watch television, it's a waste of time and energy. Dating you is perfectly hot. You... you're... you're _Wardo_.”

This time, Eduardo takes his hand, which also doesn't make much sense, but Mark goes with it. “Yeah, I know you think so, but you also think chasing me is amazingly fun. You're probably fucked up too, so it works.”

Mark can go with that.

**Paris**

Paris is weird and it pisses Mark off. Not the city... he barely notices that. The hype is more than he can figure out, honestly, but it's a city, he can get wi-fi, he'll live. No, the thing that happens is that Eduardo is there to hold a donor party for this NGO that he's trying to get off the ground and Mark's an actual guest, without having to do any fancy hacking to find out where it's held, so it's good, a good thing. And then it's this random asshole who probably wasn't even on the guestlist.

Mark is busy caging beer from an irritated looking cocktail waitress who would rather serve him something else, so he doesn't notice at first that the guy has Eduardo cornered. Even then, he doesn't think much of it, lots of people want to talk to Eduardo because he's... him. Mark isn't one to deny the appeal.

He does notice when they go off somewhere out an an open door and follows in that direction, because it seems like a good idea. He's just in time to see Eduardo take the guy out to the balcony and punch him in the face. Eduardo shouts something in Portuguese that has to be an accompanying threat.

It rocks him back on his heels-- he's can't remember ever having seen Wardo punch anyone, even people who objectively deserved it. There's something in his face... Mark has seen it before and hated it then too. He'd probably punch the guy himself for bringing it on if he didn't scramble away and basically run out of the room right then.

Whatever... it leaves Eduardo white faced and straight-backed the whole rest of the party, staring past everything like he wasn't even there. Like he was old-school strung out pod-Eduardo. Mark wants to just grab him and take him home but he knows he won't get thanked for that kind of gesture.

It's hours before it's over and Mark just hangs back and wishes he were someone who was good at this kind of thing. In the hotel room, Eduardo shrugs off his hands and questions like they're poison and when Mark doesn't back right off he slams out of the room and curls up in the fucking bathtub in his fuck off expensive suit and puts his face into his knees.

Mark has never felt his own ineffectuality with human beings more. He does the only thing he can even think of that might be useful. He calls up his Mom, even though it's some ridiculous time in New York, and babbles something that she seems to be able to make sense of.

“Mark,” she says. “Breathe, kiddo. I'm here, okay? How about I talk to him?” He's absurdly grateful for this in a way he hasn't been for anything since he was about five and she chased away the alien brain-eater he swore up and down was living under his bed.

She's still yawning when he takes the phone away from his ear and forces it up against Eduardo's. “Here,” he says, “Listen to her, okay? She's good at this.” And Eduardo finally peels his face out of his knees and stares at Mark from out of these huge, dark, hopeless eyes, like he can't even comprehend the idea of someone being able to help him right now.

Mark runs out the door and hides in the bed. It's too big for one person, and he makes himself smaller huddled against a pillow, covers drawn up over his head and hands covering his ears. He hears snippets of murmured conversation anyway, or maybe he has nightmares about them. Wardo's voice, soft and miserable, hovering between English and Portuguese, and about half of it starts out as apologies that it hurts just to hear. If he had superpowers, he'd use them to just make Eduardo stop being sorry, for anything. Ever. Just to get this to stop.

“I never told anyone this, I'm sorry, Ma'am. I'm sorry, I don't know why I'm bothering you.”

The conversation ends some interminable amount of time later with a whispered thank you and a, “Yes, I understand. I will. No, I will call. Tomorrow. First thing. No, after I eat and sleep, I understand. Thank you, you didn't have to, but I-- no, I will.”

Mark comes out from his hiding place, but Eduardo doesn't leave the bathroom for a long time after that and he respects that. Eduardo crawls into bed when it's so late that it's early and the sky is turning a pallid shade of gray. Mark's still awake, laptop on his knees and coding, because it calms him down, but he turns around to look when the bed shifts to accommodate Eduardo's weight.

“Hey,” he says, because he's got nothing else he knows how to say.

Eduardo yawns heavily and closes his eyes tight. “You're really lucky, Mark, you know that?” he asks. His voice sounds thick, almost hoarse, like he's been crying, but it's still too dark to know for sure.

Mark shakes his head, but all he can say is, “Yeah. I know.”

So, it's unfair, but he hates Paris.

A week later, when he's back in the States, he talks to his mom on the phone again. Not about whatever Eduardo said... he's actually pretty sure he never wants to know more than the scraps he couldn't help hearing. Just generally.

She sighs, but he can picture the look on her face and he knows it's not exasperation. “It'll take time, but Eduardo has time,” she says, and he nods and believes her, because she's still his mom.

**Sydney**

So, there's this girl, right? And Mark had pretty much decided that between prior lukewarm dealings with real live flesh and blood girls versus anything but lukewarm with flesh and blood Eduardo, girls weren't going to be for him. You know, adolescent porn fascination aside.

But then he's sitting at a cafe, waiting for Eduardo to come back with the coffee and energy drinks, and there she is, in this rocking little red dress that clings to hips and breasts and reveals the long, suntanned gold of her arms and legs and Mark's dick decides, that hey... breasts. Those are kind of awesome.

So, he looks, he's a guy, he's going to do that. And it is possible he is still looking when Eduardo comes back and plops his drink in front of him. Mark knows this is not what he's supposed to be doing, if only because his sisters have screamed at their various boyfriends for exactly this kind of ogling, but, hell... the only thing that would be nicer than seeing this girl naked would be seeing her naked _with_ Wardo. Their skin is a pretty similar shade, just a few variables of difference, wouldn't even pick it up unless you had great resolution and a high end graphics card. And they both have very long legs, which would make a tangle that would be...

“Hmmm,” is the sound that Eduardo makes and for a second, Mark comes out of his fantasy and tries not to wince. This is probably where he gets screamed at, or worse, looked at with big, sad, disappointed eyes.

But, no, Eduardo is nothing at all like a sister, because when he looks over at Wardo, Wardo has followed the direction of Mark's stare and is checking out that same girl. And he's sipping his coffee and then licking a drop off his lower lip, and fuck, smiling with all the intensity he usually reserves for bedrooms and bedroom substitutes. And then he looks at Mark, bright eyed and grinning and says, “So, you want to also, right?”

“Yes,” Mark says, without any real thought behind the word. He's already got some built in quick start functions that jump straight to yes when Wardo asks if he wants to try something. This has yet to steer him badly in any way.

“Excellent, let's see if she does,” Eduardo says, licks his lips one more time, and stands up. Mark blinks at him and wonders if he's supposed to be following, but no, Wardo left his messenger bag on the seat and he's striding... right up to her, holy shit.

Mark just sits there in blank amazement and watches Eduardo introduce himself to her like people actually do that in real life-- go up to strangers in cafes and just say hello and start talking. He's just out of easy earshot, but he can see the girl is smiling at whatever Wardo is saying, and who wouldn't? Especially when Eduardo laughs and makes these smooth, probably self-deprecating hand gestures.

Mark has never watched Eduardo seduce anyone before... well, himself obviously, but he was too busy being led around by the balls to really savor the view at the time. This girl is obviously cooler than he was, but she's no match, not really, because a few minutes in she's licking her lips and leaning forward, towards Eduardo, face tilted up and smiling.

And then Wardo turns his head so he's looking back at Mark over his shoulder, gesturing something and Mark can feel the girl's eyes on him, looking him over, and whoa, that might be a snag, right? People like Eduardo probably do get girls like that to go home with him just because... because he has all his Eduardo-ness to draw on. Maybe in the universe of Sean Parker and those guys, people like Mark also get girls like that, but that universe requires the lubrication of money, booze and intoxicating substances and none of those are currently in evidence.

Mark knows what happens to him in the real world, but, he has not counted on the fact that the Eduardo-ness of Eduardo might cover skinny geek boys too, at least if he is in the near vicinity. Because, the girl shrugs, tosses back a strand of perfectly straight hair and grins. And then beckons with one hand, and hell to the yes, that's him that's wanted over there.

There may as well be a magnet from her hand to his dick. And, hey, Wardo is grinning at him too. He goes over.

“Malitta,” Eduardo says, gesturing to the girl and then to Mark. “This is my... this is my friend, Mark. Mark, this is Malitta. She's a med student, but right now she's on holiday, actually, right?” He smiles at the girl, quicksilver bright and she nods eagerly.

“And is kind of at loose ends for something to do,” Malitta the med student says. She has, unsurprisingly, an Australian accent. Excellent. “Eduardo thought you blokes could keep me company.”

If Mark weren't already sure that 'company' was a euphemism, the fact that they head right back to the hotel would have clued him in. Eduardo opens the door for her and she grins like he's the cutest thing she has ever seen and then turns that grin on Mark like she expects agreement from him. He grins back. Hey, maybe this is going to work.

Mark finds evidence to support a hypothesis he generated on the way up to the hotel. To whit-- girls are a lot easier to figure out when Eduardo is there, telling him what to do, sometimes with demonstrations and finally by physically correcting what he's doing and moving him into the right position. Maybe that should be annoying, but when it means that Wardo has a hand splayed on his hip and another on his dick so that he actually guide him right into this girl at the right angle, he is shockingly okay with it.

“There,” Wardo whispers into his ear and Malitta groans in time.

The hand slides back as Mark's cock eases inside and now Eduardo just has him by the balls, easy grip and press of palm. She's wet and easy, easier than anyone he's ever been inside, even the very few girls. Probably because Wardo just about licked her all the way open and Mark shudders at the sense memory of watching that, watching, and getting to rub his hands along the bare nape of Eduardo's neck and the warm fabric of the shirt he'd never quite taken off while he made this girl come.

He can still feel that fabric now, pressed against his back, smooth and easy, and then his side when Wardo shifts over. He doesn't know where Eduardo's going, tries to grab at him in between a shuddery thrust into Malitta's body and then he figures it out and it's only the grip that's still on his balls that keeps him from coming.

Because Eduardo's mouth is where his hands are. That is, right down there, hot and wet and licking at the skin at the very point where Mark is inside this gorgeous girl and it's unreasonable, it's too much, it's meltdown.

There's more, but Mark's so buzzed through it that the memories will always be foggy, hard to retrieve without the sensation of Eduardo's tongue on his balls while his hands held him so steady and that girl looked up at him out of huge, wanting eyes.

Mark's so obliterated his brain actually shuts down, though only for a little while.

“You could have anyone you want, couldn't you?” Mark asks when Malitta takes off a few hours later, fresh from the shower and humming happily to herself as she waves goodbye at the door. He and Eduardo are still on the bed, Wardo having just flopped back down onto it after seeing Malitta to the door.

“What do you mean?” Eduardo asks, turning and propping himself up on his elbow to get a better look at Mark. He pauses and starts to shrug out of his shirt, which is the first time Mark really notices he kept it on the whole time. “Anyone, how?”

“Like... this how--” Mark gestures broadly to the mess of the sheets and the direction of the door through which the hot medical student had vanished. “I couldn't-- I mean she didn't even know you had money or if you'd done anything interesting, she just met you in a cafe and went to your hotel room because you're you.”

Eduardo blinks. “Well, yeah. I mean, not specifically me, as in Eduardo Saverin me. She was on vacation and looking to have fun. We could have been any guys.”

Mark rolls his eyes, because that's just being deliberate obtuse. “No _we_ couldn't, people looking to have fun on their vacations don't look at me and think, hey, excellent, good time to be had in that guy's pants! Not unless I have an aura of Eduardoness which is apparently generated by your proximity.”

“Eduardoness is probably not a word,” Eduardo says. He huffs a breath that just screams irritation, or would if he weren't still sprawled out and glowing from the aftermath of really good sex. “Just so you know. And we picked up Malitta because you thought she was hot, and frankly, up until two seconds ago I thought you were enjoying it. I don't know why you're being weird about it now.”

Mark figures the afterglow of the sex will continue to cushion Eduardo's annoyance long enough to keep having this conversation, so he does. “I'm not being weird and I did enjoy it. All I was saying was that, you could walk into any room with people and walk out someone on your arm, don't deny it. I don't know why you don't-- wait--” a terrifyingly intense thought strikes Mark and he can't believe it never occurred to him before. “Do you? When I'm not here, do you have a string of Malittas and just--”

Eduardo takes the wind out of him by laughing at him. Hard and loud. It makes Mark flush, but he's not as upset by being embarrassed as he should be, because of the answer Eduardo gives him. “No,” Eduardo hiccups between giggles. “Um, no, what would I do that for? Is that what you thought? I wouldn't even have this time, but... you liked her and I thought it would be fun.”

“Why not?” Mark asks, because now that he thinks about it, if getting a girl was as easy and fun for him as it seems to be for Eduardo, he probably would.

“Because it's a lot of work for a cheap one night stand? I don't know, Mark. A lot of the time when you don't see me it's because I'm too tired to get out of bed for a few weeks and I just-- Come on, it's not like the Malittas of the world are going to stick around to buy me breakfast, never mind chase me down in Singapore.”

Mark shakes his head. “She would have bought you breakfast if I wasn't here.”

Eduardo shrugs. “Maybe? So what?”

Mark can sort of see himself flailing off a verbal cliff, but now he's curious. He has to know. “So what, is that I-- I'm just wondering, okay? Why me and not Malitta?”

“Oh, for fuck's sake,” Eduardo hisses, and he's sitting upright now, finally, like it has hit him that Mark is actually serious, not just fucking with him for the hell of it. “I know this doesn't really register with you most of the time, but I'm a crazy person, Mark. Normal people wouldn't put up with me.”

“That's not true,” he says, though not as emphatically as he meant to.

“No, you're right. Everyone is easily infatuated by some dude that got them sent to prison—”

“Only for a few hours, and it wasn't even prison, just the police station, it was no big deal!” Mark interrupts indignantly.

Eduardo pauses, like he's waiting for him to go on, but Mark doesn't so Eduardo does. “For most people, it would be a big deal, Mark. Most people also wouldn't hack my emails to find my location and then fly out to see me just because I left them a cryptogram.”

Mark knows the answer to this one. “You wanted me to do that, you told me to, that was not technically stalking! It was consensual stalking!”

Eduardo presses his hands to his eyes but his lips twitch like he's going to smile. “No, I know. I wanted you to do that, but I will bet you anything that Malitta? She would not have done that. She also would never have put me on the phone with her mother or tried to buy me a Lamborghini, or come on weird religious pilgrimages with me just because. I couldn't even take my shirt off with her without probably freaking her out because-- this.” He thrusts out his marked up arms, and Mark stares down at them, momentarily distracted. They do look noticeably better, actually, if not quite smooth yet.

“I don't see why not,” Mark grumbles when his brain jumps back onto the right track. He reaches out to take one of Wardo's hands anyway, just to run his fingers over the skin of his inner elbow, just because. “It's a little bit inconvenient, but it's not like you're not worth the trouble.”

“Yeah, I noticed that you think so,” Eduardo says and he is smiling now, relaxed and enjoying the touch. Mark actually can't help smiling back, because it's one of those smiles-- the wide open ones.

Then he pauses. Rewinds the last few minutes in his head, because he just missed something important. “Wait, when can't you get out of bed for a few weeks?”

Eduardo just shakes his head and waves it off with the hand that Mark isn't holding onto. “Never mind, turn of phrase. It's all good.” And Mark might have pressed, but then Eduardo budges over and kisses him on the mouth. Mark's dick is probably actually sore and he's pretty sure at first that it is not humanly possible for him to go another round, but Wardo takes his time, slow and steady, lots of hands and tongue.

Mark falls asleep almost right after and when he wakes up, Eduardo and his things are gone again. He yawns, rubs his eyes, and decides that next time he's going to invest in a tracking bug somehow. Not to be creepy... just... just in case.

**Long Island**

Introducing Eduardo and his mother via telephone has long running and unexpected consequences. Because, apparently, they keep in touch. This is more than a little bewildering, since Eduardo basically vanishes on Mark and everyone else on the globe for huge chunks of time, and is just as likely to force Mark to chase him down by hacking his location through credit card and email traces as to send a note or text with a forwarding address. Mark's mother has many awesome talents, but hacking locations is not one of them so Eduardo must keep in touch _completely voluntarily_. It's mind boggling.

So, even though he is actually very grateful that someone competent knows where Eduardo is at all times these days, Mark is understandably taken aback when his mom calls and says he'd better be home for Thanksgiving this year, or else, and oh, by the way, “Eduardo will be there.”

She explains the mechanism of this to him, but it's still not as logical as it should be. These things never are. However, when his cab pulls in his parent's driveway, Mark isn't surprised at the piece of automotive conspicuous consumption with temporary plates parked in the driveway like it belongs there. He just knows Wardo finally stopped eyefucking the damned car and made a commitment. It's sort of a relief to know that he _can_ , even if it just to a Lamborghini.

Then he goes inside. There are a lot of surreal things in the world, but Eduardo Saverin in one of his immaculate suits sitting up straight on the couch in the house where Mark grew up and used to play grand theft auto probably tops them out. Surrounded by Mark's sisters, no less, and apparently entertaining them with a story involving that one time he watched someone stick their head in crocodile's mouth in Thailand. Mark doesn't remember having heard that story before.

So Mark's staring a little. Then Eduardo finally looks up and blinks and he's staring a little back. He does this weirdly nervous looking little wave thing, which does not match his suit. “Hi!” he says.

Someone who thinks she's funny chooses this moment to say, “Hey, Mark, which devil did you have to sell your soul to in order to land this one? And can I have his card?” And they all giggle to themselves.

It's a little better when he discovers that Eduardo owns actual jeans and can be coerced into wearing them, but even then, he's still Eduardo, and this is still _Long Island_ , in a room full of actual sisters. Does not compute. Eduardo seems to feel kind of weird about too, or at least he looks twitchy when Mark drags him up to his bedroom to implement causal clothing coercion.

“Your mother promised she'd tell you I might come and make sure you didn't mind,” is about the first thing that Eduardo says to him when they're in private. “Do you mind?” It is an unusually stupid for Eduardo to say, but then Mark has noticed that Eduardo is just dumb about some things.

“No, why would I mind?” Mark says. And with that out of the way, he takes yet another long moment to notice that Eduardo is here in his old bedroom, in his parent's house. “When I was a teenager, I didn't even really have wet dreams about things like this, the thought of hot people in my bedroom with the door shut would have been overly optimistic.”

“Oh nice.” Eduardo laughs at that and shakes his head, but his spine relaxes a little and he sits down on Mark's old twin bed, stretching out his long legs. “I thought optimism was what wet dreams were all about.” But talking is boring... Mark really just wants to crawl into the space between his knees.

Impulse control is kind of an issue, apparently, because the next thing he knows, he's there, Edaurdo's legs pressed on either side of him and Eduardo's smiling face close enough to smell his skin. He smells a little like new cars and clean laundry, like he knows exactly what cologne to wear and how much of it to make you want to get closer without it ever being excessive. “So, you really are glad to see me?” he murmurs, like it's even a question.

Mark nods at the obvious statement of fact.

This is of course when his mom screams up from the hall somewhere, “Boys! We're putting out dinner!” Mark sighs and rolls his eyes even as Eduardo stumbles back, all nervous again, like he's not sure where to put himself.

“Hang on,” he says, standing up and scrambling for the suitcase that has somehow found it's way up into Mark's bedroom. “Jeans, right? Sorry, I wasn't sure what to wear. I can't remember the last time I ever met someone's family.”

Even jeans look weirdly expensive on Eduardo, like he'd borrowed them from a television show about improbably attractive people living in very large apartments in New York or LA. His legs look just as long and he's still wearing a button down shirt with sleeves hanging just past his wrists, hiding the sensitive parts of his skin. Expensive is exactly the right word for Eduardo. Like the car in the driveway or someone's two hundred year old scotch. Like the kind of guy they'd be tripping all over themselves to have had in the finals clubs back in Harvard. Of course they'd have had no idea what he was like under the clothes so fuck them.

It's weird, because Mark's always been more of a beer and Prius kind of guy and here in his bedroom is just... Eduardo, grinning nervously at him. And that's just wrong, Eduardo shouldn't have to be nervous here or at all.

“Don't worry,” he offers. “If anyone annoys you, you can hit them. I won't be mad.” Eduardo looks at him like he's waiting for the punchline, so Mark adds, “Seriously, I bet they deserve it.”

“You're the strangest and most ungrateful person I've ever met,” Eduardo says and grins like strange is exactly what he was looking for in a guy. At least he stops looking nervous. “Your family is really nice.”

Mark rolls his eyes and doesn't get a chance to comment because there's pounding on the door and it's a sister screaming, “Hey, Mark, dinner! No one wants to wait for you. And you shouldn't starve your boyfriend either, he's too good for you and he obviously needs to eat more!”

“Really nice,” Mark mutters, feeling like his point has been made. Eduardo doesn't have a comeback-- instead he actually blushes, which interesting and Mark can't actually ever remember seeing him do before, and there have been threesomes and public sex and various other things he'd thought were more in the realm of porn than reality. It is fascinating. It makes him look less like a high end Lamborghini and more like... Mark isn't sure yet, but it's something worth having.

Dinner is excruciating because a large part of it seems to be dedicated to who gets to go for a ride in the Lamborghini and in what order. “You don't have to give rides to any of these freeloaders, don't worry, they can get their own cars,” Mark whispers, loudly enough that everyone but his dad and Eduardo glares at him

Eduardo blushes for the second time in one day and shakes his head. “No, it's fine. I'd be happy to.” And that's apparently all Eduardo has to do to spend the rest of the day surrounded by cooing women who want to show him pictures of the time Mark got shoved into a locker by a bunch of asshole jocks in the tenth grade or him in his hand me down Halloween costume from kindergarten or something, as if getting hand-me-down's from girls had been his fault.

“Make them leave him alone?” he asks his mom when he's helping out with the dishes and she laughs at him, which is completely unfair.

“I really am sorry for the crazy people bothering you,” Mark tells Eduardo that night anyway, when he's got the door locked with a chair holding it closed just in case anyone's been keeping up with her lockpicking skills. Eduardo thinks that is hilarious but he probably wouldn't be laughing if they were interrupted in the middle of anything important by a sister.

“It's fine,” Eduardo tells him. “Really. I really like them. You're really lucky.” And he smiles like it really is fine and he's surprised by that too.

Then Mark kisses him and Eduardo's smile turns lazy and easy. “Want me to tell you about the wet dreams I didn't have?” he asks.

Eduardo raises both eyebrows. “I don't know, if you're loud, is anyone going to kick me out for debauching their son?”

“Ha. They'd probably kick me out instead. I'm pretty sure they like you better than me already and it's been less than twenty-four hours.” He presses one palm against each side of Eduardo's face and kisses him again and Eduardo slides into it like he's perfectly comfortable in his skin and this place after all.

But after, when it's time to sleep he lays curled in on himself like he's trying to build in space around his body that doesn't exist, and that's unusual, so Mark isn't sure and he doesn't know how to ask. Sometimes he thinks everything goes better when he just doesn't talk, so maybe he can try that.

It is good for a few days, just like always with Wardo, it's good and then... Then he wakes up too early on the last morning, the one before he flies back to California, because he's cold and his bed is cold. He reaches out and his fingers brush the wall and he squeezes his eyelids shut before opening them and shakes his head. Gone again, he thinks. He rolls over and buries his head in a pillow that smells like whatever Eduardo uses to wash his hair. Then he gets out of bed and, yeah, all of Eduardo's things are gone, packed up and vanished, but he notices something weird... the damned car is still in the driveway.

He sucks in a breath and tiptoes downstairs. The staircase creaks like it always did when he was trying to be quiet as a kid. He bites his lip, and tries to go slower. From the kitchen, he can hear voices, soft and indistinct. One is Eduardo's. He breathes out.

He moves closer and then stops when the voices coalesce into words. The other one is his Mom and that makes him relax a little, because she'll have the words.

“Oh, honey,” she says. “You don't honestly think that it's all about catching up on lost sleep, do you?”

The silence is painfully awkward. Mark can feel it even from where he's standing in the hallway, it stiffens his shoulders and inspite of himself he wants to go in and tell her not to question, not to push, it won't work. But then... “It's not... I'm not depressed, or anything, okay? I'm not sad, or jonesing or having bad dreams. I just.... I get tired sometimes, like it's a little raw and I need to rest up, I don't know. I don't want to bother Ma-- people when I'm like that.”

“Mark's already texted me on three separate occasions to ask if I'd reconsidered my stance on whether microchips potentially turned consensual stalking into lawsuit enabling creepy stalking.” Mark sighs. He thought that was a perfectly legitimate subject to want an ethics opinion about, it wasn't like he'd unilaterally gone and done it, was it?

Eduardo sounds fairly dubious when he talks though, so Mark is glad he hadn't had time to implement that idea yet. “Seriously?”

“My son is a boy, god love him, who wore the same pair of socks for five months, thinks that forty-eight hours is a perfectly reasonable shift of time to sit in front of computer without moving-- where not moving might include peeing in empty energy drink cans for the duration, at least according to the complaint his freshman year roommate lodged. Do you honestly think the fact you want to stay in bed and listen to Stravinsky and read Adam Smith and Engels back to back instead of talking for a few weeks at a stretch will bother him?”

“I--”

“I know it's hard, kiddo, but he's my kid. Can you trust him on this?” She sounds inexpressibly sad and Mark can't even be mad about that stupid, only somewhat accurate story from freshman year.

He wants to keep listening, but it's weird, when people are talking about trusting him behind his back. Whatever. He slips cautiously back up the stairs and into his room and boots up his laptop.

Mark doesn't know quite where this ends, where it's supposed to end, not until he's packing his bag and getting ready to call a cab back to catch his flight and Wardo comes up and sits down on his bed and says, “Hey, so I have this shiny new car and nowhere to garage it. Once you said you had some space?”

Mark turns up to look at him, but he doesn't even look nervous about asking, so someone calmed him down. He just looks thoughtful, contemplative. “You know I do,” Mark says and finds himself smiling.

Eduardo's answering smile is bright.“So, I could bring it to you? It'll probably take me some time to drive it cross-country. Like a week, if I dawdle.”

“Than I guess I'll see you in a week.”

 

**Palo Alto**

It's probably because of the text that Mark sent Dustin. The one that said, _I'm staying in, please forget to write. You're in charge so don't burn the office down_. That was never going to go over well, but Mark hadn't expected it to make Dustin actually materialize at his house or he'd never had sent it.

He definitely did not have Dustin on the brain when he was eating breakfast and debugging some peripheral apps while an entirely different track of his brain enjoyed the fact that Eduardo was sitting across from him at the breakfast table, wearing one of Mark's old Harvard sweatshirts and reading the goddamned Economist. Humming to himself, like he was at home, which would be a good conclusion for him to come to.

Putting his feet in Mark's lap like he was expecting an ankle massage, which was a definite possibility if he kept doing that.

That, of course was when the door swung open, admitting one of the few people who had a key and did not know how to ring the buzzer. “Holy shit, what's with the car? Are you having a quarter life crisis, because I--” Dustin stops mid-sentence to stare at the scene in front of him and then starts again just as easily. “Oh, look, holy shit. I mean, Mark, your femme fatale is a real person and not just an echo on the internet!”

“Homme fatale is actually the phrase you're looking for,” Eduardo says, without looking up from his coffee or moving his feet out of Mark's lap. “You're Dustin, right?”

“Yeah,” Dustin says, while Mark tries to remember if he ever described Dustin to Eduardo in a way that would make it easy to pick right on what he was actually like. “Man, I can't believe you are finally here! If I hadn't been texting you, I'd have decided Mark made you up like an imaginary boyfriend. Hey, for all I know your texts could have been from Mark's alternate personality. The sane one.”

Texts? “Texts?” Mark hears himself say. His hands tighten on the keyboard in front of him. “Wait... there were texts?”

Eduardo yawns and stretching, cracking his neck and back with the motion, but Mark isn't that distractable right now. “Yeah, Mark, texts. That's what you get for never answering your phone or your texts while you're coding. Your phone buzzes and buzzes and I can't sleep until I answer it for you.”

Mark blinks. This scenario sounds fairly probable on consideration. “But you could have told me about it?”

Eduardo just makes a scoffing sound. “You were in the same room, Mark. It's not like I did it behind your back.”

Dustin giggles into his hands. “Oh, man, that's hilarious. Mark never noticed at all?”

Mark ignores him, he's had practice. “Since when?”

Eduardo shrugs. “Singapore.”

“Dustin? Why were you texting my-- why were you texting Eduardo?”

Dustin looks vaguely wounded, though Mark has no idea by what. “Hey, you ditched us, Mark! Was I not supposed to notice that you skipped the country every few weeks? And that whole, yeah, I'm telecommuting thing? It only works if you actually telecommute. Anyway, why are we talking about this-- look-- it's Eduardo!” Dustin looks disgustingly enthused about this.

“Yeah, I have been Eduardo my whole life,” Eduardo says. He looks entertained, so Mark supposes someone is getting something out of this.

Dustin grins, steals a chair and settles into it, clearly making himself at home. “Well, are you going to stay. Hey, wait—is that your car? That is an awesome car!”

“I like how when you thought it was mine it was a quarter life crisis,” Mark says.

Dustin rolls his eyes. “That's because you're Mark Zuckerberg, geekboy, and Eduardo is James Bond meets Frigga One Eye.”

Mark takes a second to be offended by this and another second to be annoyed that Eduardo takes his feet out of Mark's lap and turns around to give his full attention to Dustin. “I like James Bond, but I had to look up who Frigga One Eye is and I'm not sure I'm cool with the comparison,” Eduardo says, but he's still grinning. “I mean, dude, do I sound like a mute, homicidal Swedish girl or what?”

“The only comparison is in the awesome,” Dustin says. “If I'd known you were coming, I'd have brought the DVD.”

“I feel like you don't need me to have this conversation,” Mark mutters. At that Eduardo turns around and gives him sad eyes and Dustin laughs at him. He's not sure which is worse.

“You're just jealous because I'm stealing your boyfriend to be my new best friend and dumping you,” Dustin says, and sticks out his tongue. “Nyah, nyah,” he adds.

“Did you just say 'Nyah, nyah'? Out loud and in a sentence?” Mark asks without really thinking about it.

“Boyfriend?” Eduardo asks at the same time. Mark turns to look at him. He looks... surprised. Mark blinks, not really sure what to do with that.

“Yes?” he offers in return. He thought it was obvious, wasn't Wardo's car in his garage and stuff in his bedroom?

“Duh,” Dustin adds, because clearly 'nyah, nyah' was not enough juvenile ridiculousness for one conversation.

“Oh,” Eduardo says and then he smiles, slow and wide. “Yeah. Okay. I'm good with that.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [friend of mine (the guess what, i'm not a robot remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/193694) by [kristin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kristin/pseuds/kristin)




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